


What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

by sterekfluffer (teampancakes)



Series: Tumblr Ficlets/Drabbles [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Multi, no happy ending, season 5, sorry I suck at tagging, the meaning of love, to different people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 18:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4489644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teampancakes/pseuds/sterekfluffer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What love means to the pack, from Stiles' POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SORRY THIS IS PURE ANGST OF 4 AM STEREK FEELS. I just had to write this. There is no happy ending *warning*  
> Title comes from a book by Raymond Carver - personally I haven't read it but I've heard RC is great so check it out!

Stiles knew love meant different things to different people. He would know, anyway, because he was always good at observing and figuring stuff out. For Scott and Allison, love had been like the romcom everybody loves. When you're a teenager, everyone tells you that _all you feel is a high school crush, it can't be love, you're too young_ but one look at Scott and Allison and Stiles knew theirs was a love that could last. It was like when they're meant to be and they would always find a way, no matter what. It was sweet – Stiles had often helped him break into her locker to leave her notes and little gifts. Scott and Allison – the hunter and the werewolf. In a different world, it probably would never have worked, but the fact that it _had_ in this world was all that mattered. No matter how many times they broke up or got back together, Allison would always be Scott's anchor, even if she wasn't with them anymore. He would deny it to Stiles but Stiles knew it anyway. Love was remembrance and writing her initials next to his because she had mattered – she was supposed to be there. 

Love, to Scott, meant working extra shifts at Deaton's so his mother wouldn't have to pick up the night shifts at the hospital. Love was when he brought her lunch when she had a long shift and couldn't get away; it was when he left her notes on the fridge to tell her where he was so she wouldn't worry. 

Love, to Lydia, meant power and popularity, at first, but she always ended up finding the good in the person and bringing it out. She had got together with Jackson because he was the most popular boy in school and she was the most popular girl – they were power couple extraordinaire. Stiles had loved Lydia once – or thought he did at least. But Lydia didn't love – she was too logical for it. She calculated and planned and Jackson balanced her equation so she chose him. But after the kanima, after Jackson moved away, Stiles saw that she  _had_ loved – he just hadn't seen it. With Aiden, the stakes were higher – he was the enemy, she was human. But she ended up changing him, just like Jackson. 

To Erica and Boyd, love had meant saving the other a place next to them at the lunch table. It meant Erica saved half her cupcake for Boyd and Boyd stood fifteen minutes in line on Thursdays for the chips Erica liked. They had been simple – exchanges and little things. He would carry her backpack, she would come for each and every one of his games and every after-school practice. They had been Scott and Allison without the drama and Stiles sometimes felt that if someone wanted to look at true love, just in it's essence, they should just have looked at those two. 

For Isaac, love was complicated – he had been deprived of it for so long he had begun to forget it's existence. For him, it was hard to believe in any other emotion besides fear, hurt and anger. But Stiles had seen him cry when he took away a dog's pain for the first time. He had seen the way he looked at Allison when Scott wasn't her boyfriend anymore. He had seen how Isaac gravitated towards Derek and how Derek seemed to spend more time with him than with Erica or Boyd because while they had each other – Isaac had no one. Love, for Isaac, was a safety net, a security blanket – something he fell back on when everything went down. 

For his Dad, love was lugging his son to school every morning since his wife died. Love was packing lunches and asking him what he liked to eat and remembering. Love was running into his room after Stiles had had a bad dream and pulling him close and holding him till he fell asleep again. Love was looking up panic attacks and telling his son his mom still loved him even though on the outside she didn't seem to at all anymore.

To his mom, love was a strange thing. Sometimes she remembered who she loved, sometimes she forgot. She always forgot him the most and he wondered why that was. Her love wasn't tangible and Stiles could hardly feel it most of the time. But his dad would tell him it was there, he just had to look hard enough. And he did and he found tiny pockets of it, hidden – love, then, was teaching Stiles how to paint and telling him about birds and the preserve. But he had to look for it more often than he would find it and eventually it became too much and he let go of the hidden pockets and stepped back. 

Love, to Derek, was the most confusing. Maybe it was selling his Camaro and getting a cheaper car because Isaac needed money to get through high school. Maybe it was arranging Erica and Boyd's funeral all on his own and sitting with their families even though they didn't know who he had been for their children. Maybe it was finding a way to keep his pack for harm, no matter how much he had to sacrifice of himself along the way. 

Stiles thought love meant Derek climbing up to his room every other night – asking him for help with supernatural creature of the week. Stiles thought love was holding Derek up in a pool for two hours even though his arms ached and he was exhausted to the bone. Stiles thought love meant comforting Derek when Kali had him kill Boyd – love was supposed to be the hand on his shoulder, tethering him. Love was supposed to be the look Derek gave him when he realized Stiles didn't think of werewolves as monsters. Love was supposed to be Derek's loft in the afternoons where it was just the two of them and they were researching and Derek would buy him lunch if he was early or dinner if he was running late. Love was supposed to be Derek – love was supposed to be – 

Stiles thought he loved Derek. Stiles thought Derek maybe loved him back. 

But Derek left anyway. When it all came down to it, when Stiles boiled it down to one single point for analysis it all came down to this: Derek had lost a lot – his family, his first love, his friends, his pack. Derek had lost what it felt like to be normal. And Stiles got that, he really did. But leaving Beacon Hills meant was a finality – it meant Derek had nothing left there – not even Stiles. 

Stiles had thought maybe Derek loved him back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you hate me for this you can come cry about it on my [tumblr](http://sterekfluffer.tumblr.com/) :(


End file.
